Sunday, November 4, 2007


4 free days have gone by and it's back to work tomorrow. honestly, i am not exactly interested, or in a positive mental state to learn this and that about BOC tomorrow.

i promise to give you more, next time. i love you.

spent the most of the day working on the speech. i think it'll be quite a moving speech, or at least i hope so. the last thing i want is realising that people fall asleep when i'm speaking despite having put so much effort to craft this out. you might want to take a look:

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“”””””As mentioned, competency, as the way we define, is the proficiency of the serviceman in his trade or craft. Not only that, he desires to build a solid foundation in his professional knowledge and skills and is constantly learning and upgrading in pursuit of excellence.”””””

Today, rather than sharing with all snippets in my Air Force School journey where I observed competency being displayed, which I find slightly presumptuous, I would like to share with all what I observed were factors that affected our training and development into a competent individual in Air Force School.

Alright, here it goes. I would like to divide these factors into 2 main categories, firstly “Individual”, secondly, “Learning environment, or group”.

Firstly, the individual. For this, I would like to cite the example of a certain friend of mine. Despite being chided all day long by instructors, and sometime friends alike, this man remained an active learner and became even more determined to prove his worth, much unlike many people who would have simply gave up and accepted the situation as a fact of life.

As I worked with him, I observed resilience. I found his ability to bounce back from the difficulties he faced admirable. I saw him listening actively and intently to peoples’ comments about him. He constantly used these comments to reflect upon his mistakes. To top if off, he became a disciplined and religious learner.

What I would like to illustrate in this example is simple. As an individual, we are responsible for adjusting ourselves internally to a condition where we are most suited to learning. That means, we are the ones who can most effectively motivate ourselves to work hard and learn. When faced with setbacks, we are the only ones who can pull ourselves together and look ahead. We are the ones who adjust our mental state into one that assimilates knowledge. In a nutshell, we affect our own learning.

Throughout my entire stay in Air Force School, I realized that individual responsibility is the greatest underlying factor that affects our competency development. As we train to become competent controllers, we have a responsibility to be proactive, assimilative and reflective. Without this, we will be unable to achieve greater heights. This responsibility, I believe, will eventually translate into skills that we pick up along the way. Such is the power of the individual.

Secondly, “the learning environment.” I think we can all find common ground that the learning environment can affect how well an individual learns. In my opinion, I believe that the Air Force School has provided us with a pretty conducive learning environment in terms of training aids, training facilities and quality instructors. Yet, this, in my opinion, is not enough.

My stay here has proved to me that a “group-based learning environment” is a major factor that affects our quest to become competent controllers. More often that not, we see trainees (especially ATC trainees), gathering in one’s bunk and revising on the day’s lessons. This has become a frequent event in the accommodation block as the course progressed. In such gatherings, knowledge held by individual trainees is shared to the group. At the end of the session, the entire group would have gained new knowledge from the sharing.

The above example that I’ve painted exemplifies the power of group learning. I’d compare this to a positive feedback cycle. Individual knowledge is shared, eventually resulting in an increase in individual knowledge across the board, which in turn, via further sharing sessions, results in more knowledge obtained by the individual.

In conclusion, I would like to just say that where or not we eventually become competent individuals depends on how far are we willing to work, either as an individual or a team. I believe that if we are able to put in substantial effort, we can eventually become PROFICIENT individuals with SOLID FOUNDATION IN OUR KNOWLEDGE and a LIFE-LONG LEARNER (AFS definition of competency)

Thank you VERY MUCH.

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I'm glad that the animation turned up with positive response. it really feels good to have your efforts recognised.

it's about time to read up on the newspaper. okay this is what i plan to do. i've reading the newspaper daily (except for the past 4 days) and this is not enough. so i have decided to come up with my own views about the issues. it's about time to gain back the intellect lost during our wonderful army days. so, stay tuned (haha nobody watches this anyway!).

disturbed you at 9:25 PM